Tour de France 2010: Stage 9 preview

Start town: Morzine-AvoriazMorzine is located half-way between Lake Leman and Mont-Blanc. This authentic Savoy village, situated at an altitude of 1,000 m, has maintained its charm thanks to traditional architecture made of wooden chalets, with roofs often made of local slate.

At the heart of the Portes du Soleil (the gates to the sun) and their 650 km of ski slopes, Morzine is ideal for all winter sports, such as family skiing holidays, snow-shoe hikes, as well as hang-gliding, but is also a warm and friendly place for recharging your batteries. Although white in winter, Morzine is bursting with colour in the summer.

You can climb its slopes on foot or bike, plunge into its streams for gorge scrambling, rafting or other white water sports, or swing through the trees at the aerial adventure park. To get to know the heritage of Morzine better, weekly visits allow visitors to discover the old quarters, slate-making workshops, cheese-makers (of tome, abondance and reblochon) and themed trails reveal the riches of the natural environment on the banks of the Dranse as well as the to-and-fro of migratory birds.

Finish town: Saint-Jean-De-MaurienneAt the heart of the biggest cycling area available to climbers, Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne has a veritable passion for cycling.

Galibier, Télégraphe, Madeleine, Glandon, Croix-de-Fer, Iseran… it is at the crossroads of all these mythical passes and famous climbs, for the utmost delight of sports cyclists, touring cyclists, mountain bikers or simply spectators.

Furthermore, Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne boasts the rich heritage of a Town of Art and History: the cathedral and gothic cloisters, a crypt that was a cradle to Romanesque art, the suit museum, the Mont-Corbier museum (a liqueur made out of plants gathered from the surrounding mountains) and, of course, the Opinel museum, devoted to the now world famous knife invented more than a century ago a stone’s throw away from the town.

Lastly, in a year that marks the 150th anniversary of the annexation of Savoy by France, in 2010 Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne will be organising many events in addition to the traditional Saint-Jean Bread Festival that takes place on the 5th of August.

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